I'm interested in this too because I have no clue how to form an opinion on it without knowing that I broke my own rules and thus making it kind of pointless.

From an outside perspectice, I'm against it. I wouldn't want anyone else to have sexual contact with my dog. And I think that any dog owner can agree with that. But at the same time I know how absolutely hard it can be to avoid it from happening when the opportunity is unexpectedly there and the moment is just so perfect that it's near impossible to ignore.

So the best I've currently come up with is that you do it preplanned, did it with a single purpose, it's definitely a no-go. But the area gets rather grey the moment the animal actually instigates it and is the one who makes the first move. It should still be wrong, but I don't want to judge other people differently than I judge myself. And it's hard to say you did the wrong thing when the outcome was as amazing as it was.

While I'm against fencehopping, I think that the more expensive and exotic the animal is (Okapi > Zebra > Horse > Dog) the more I'm okay with it simply because exotics are expensive and most people can't afford them yet can't help that their attracted to them. If one can afford the species then I feel their should be absolutely no fencehopping. Edited, removed Tiger.

I don't really approve of concept of fence jumping as a whole, but it would be rather hypocritical of me to tell others not to do so because I myself have fence jumped in the past. It's not something I am particularly proud of but we were all young and dumb at some point in our lives. I definitely think fence jumping is a blite that will never go away, but at the same time I'm not terribly opposed to the idea in limited situations.

One of my biggest gripes with fence jumping is that most of people you hear about who participate in this activity have no respect for the animals they are getting involved with. Often times they will force the animals into having sex against their will, simply because they have no idea how to ask the animal for permission. It doesn't help that many of these folks are completely ignorant of he animal's behavior and get themselves, or the animal, into a dangerous situation they shouldn't be in. Just look at the all of people who've been caught and have made the news for messing with animals that do not belong to them. Many of these do not involve harmless intimacy alone, but more often than not other sick and abusive crimes are committed against the animals involved.

People who don't have enough respect for the owners, wont have much respect for the animals themselves, and because of that lack of respect they show little regard for the animal's well-being. Any person who causes injury to an animal should be prosecuted if caught.

When I used to fence jump it only involved places and horses that I already knew VERY well, and interacted with on a regular basis. The wishes of those equine partners were always my priority. I would never do anything to put them in danger, and always respected there decisions regarding sexual contact. it also helped that these were all places where I was fairly certain I wouldn't get caught, and the horses I was involved with knew and trusted me completely. These were all animals that I had already established relationships with prior to making the decision to visit them discreetly. Also cameras were not nearly as peeve plenty as they are today. Many barns have security systems in place because they keep expensive equipment on site.

My advice, if you want to have an intimate experience with an animal with out getting your own, take the time to become friends with someone who shares those same interests and has your animal of choice. You will have someone around who knows the animals involved and can help you interact with them safely. You get to really know the animals involved which makes the experience much more rewarding. Fence jumping is just not worth the risk, or the stress involved. If animals are truly your passion it is far more worthwhile to get your own animals and build a relationship with them.

By my definition, fencehopping is wrong, though I take a looser definition than many.

I take fencehopping to be accessing an area that does not belong to you, or that you have no business nor permission accessing, to make sexy time with an animal to whom you have no relation.

If the owner is unaware of such actions, it may be questionable the grounds of subversion of trust and whatnot, but I do not necessarily consider it fencehopping unless the human is unfamiliar to the animal and vice-versa.

So, I do not consider having sex with a friend's dog (provided you know the dog well and it is consensual) in your home fencehopping, but it is certainly not advisable, in the same way that having consensual sex with a visiting (adult) sibling of a friend could easily sour that friendship.

Have you ever done it?

Heh... ask me personally.

Mixed. I have jumped a fence many years ago. They seemed to be comfortable with me being there, curiously coming up to me and sniffing, but not with me touching them, so I was just there in their company for a while and went home. It was nice.

But it is trespassing, so I would obviously not recommend it to anyone.

I'm talking a bit out of my ass, but hasn't there been a frequent theme in art and literature basically forever? Where without the knowledge of their (would be disapproving) parents, teenagers have secret romances, secretly going their homes or inviting others to their homes? And isn't it romantic and everyone roots for their love?

I'm not saying it's the same with an animal and a human. But I think my view still resembles that and I don't really fault people for doing it. And then, animals do have their own consciousness, emotion and can decide for themselves what they want.

But it's not like I don't see the flip side. If you're hopping the fence of a stranger, you get together with animals you don't know anything about belonging to someone you don't know anyone about. That's just inviting trouble. E.g. What if an animal is very scared and hurts itself accidentally while running away?

If the owner is someone you know: You violate their trust. That's a bad thing to do. What if they find out? Will it cause them emotional trouble towards the dog? You just don't know what consequences it'll have.

Also: diseases?!?

I think, ultimately, when it comes to fencehopping of any kind, the arguments for it tend to just boil down to "I just really want to have sex with that animal."

I've seen people argue that animals are sexual creatures capable of deciding for themselves who they want to have sex with, and I fully agree with this statement, but it doesn't excuse the betrayal of trust of the person whose animal you happen to be playing with. Respecting the wishes of other people is a pretty basic moral standard, and setting it aside just because you want to have sex is fairly shabby in my opinion.

I've seen it argued that animals aren't property and so the wishes of their owner are meaningless, but while I agree that animals should not be thought of as property, they are often thought of as family, by zoos and non-zoos alike. I kind of think of it like not seducing a friend's spouse behind his or her back. Sure, they're able to make up their own mind about it, but it's not something you should be doing if you actually care about your friend. At the end of the day, no-one needs to fencehop. People do it because they're horny and the opportunity is there, but that doesn't make it excusable. People need to learn to just keep it in their pants when it comes to other people's animals :P

I'm just using the word in a broad sense of "sexual contact with an animal that does not belong to you."

If that's the definition we're going with, then I do think fence hopping can be an ethical practice. It's similar to bestiality in general; the act is perfectly fine if you know what you're doing and you keep the welfare of all parties in your best interest. The unfortunate thing with both fence hopping and bestiality is that many people don't.

Take my relationship, which by this definition, is considered fence hopping. I know the animal, I know the one who takes care of her, and I made sure that both of them were okay with everything before the relationship got too intimate. Even if the animal doesn't belong to me, I believe I went about this in an ethical way, and nobody has been hurt as a result.

I think that when you get down to it, fence hopping leaves a considerable number of grey areas, which are best negotiated on a case by case basis.

I was a fencehopper once too. And I kind of am till today. The problem is that my beloved mare was not my own property and she wasn't on my ground as it is far too small. But I knew her owner and helped him with his work on his barn where I met her in the first place. I knew the mare and if she had an illness or other problems. Of course asking her owner if I would be allowed to have sex with her was dumb so I did it secretly. What is with this kind of Fencehopping?

So as a zoo, how do you date?

I can't say if you don't own your partner keep it in your pants. That leaves no room for love, no room for anything except marriage(ownership) to some creature who might never want you. Buy a pup or dog and plan on fucking them, hope they learn to love you and you them.

The heart isn't that easy a thing to work with, although animals are certainly easier to love in some senses of the word. I fell in love... or at least a crush... on a filly named Julie way back in 92-93. I still have her pictures in my desk. She wasn't mine, was owned by a zoo, we never had sex, if things were different I might have and I would never have regretted it... but I've been around 100s of horses without that crush and would agree in those cases it would have been just about sex and not right.

The horse I've had the most sex with was not owned by the person who gave me access, nor myself but I was tasked with working with her. Except for her pasture mates I am the one who spent the most time with her. We developed a friendship. Not sure I'm going to feel bad or immoral about that either. The owner certainly wasn't around to care for her.

I do not think it is nearly the black and white issue people make it out to be. It's like saying sex outside of marriage is immoral, while you might believe that, doesn't make it true for everyone else. That being said, trespassing, b+e, sexing an animal just because it is standing there are all on the bad side of the fencehopping debate and few people disagree with that. Those that do disagree are usually also in the position of justifying what is essentially rape on the basis of getting off.

I don't approve in general, but I accept that there are situations in which it's alright.

The most important part of sharing intimacy with an animal is ensuring at all times that their needs or desires are met. That can be tough considering the communication barrier, so it's necessary that the animal and the person be very familiar with one another. It's not impossible that that's the case in a fencehopping situation, obviously, but it seems significantly less likely than in a 'normal' intimate animal-human relationship.

But even while it's possible that you can fencehop to be with an animal you're really close with... it's still hugely disrespectful to the animal's owner. It's a pretty safe bet that they wouldn't approve of that sort of activity, and I don't think it does any good for zoos' image to blatantly ignore an animal's owner's wishes for sexual gratification.

You can construct situations where it'd seem acceptable-- being the primary caretaker of an animal whose owner is abusive/uncaring about their wellbeing, caring for animals who don't have an owner, etc. But when someone says 'fencehopping', my reaction is a negative one.

I think it's technically wrong, but on a purely theoretical level I like the idea of banging a mare at someone's barn in the middle of night while enjoying the thrill of risking getting caught by the owner :)

Oh, this takes me back to being a dumb horny 15-year-old. The first time I tried to have sex, it was under cover of night with a shetland mare in fields near my parent's house. Although she was friendly, I interpreted her behaviour as a "no thanks", and nothing happened.

As a less dumb grown up I'd recommend against literal fence-hopping, but mainly because surveillance cameras back then were grainy 1fps and night vision was unheard of outside the military, while now it's 60fps HD with night vision for 100 bucks. Horses themselves I see as people in their own right, but while I don't know how the average horse owner sees their horses, from what everyone else on this thread is saying, I'd have to recommend against it even if you knew you would not be caught.

As for non-technical fence-hopping... there were two other times I came close to losing my virginity with dogs, but decided against from their behaviour. Would I have done the deed, if things had been different? Probably all three times.

Of course, all this assumes that respect and knowledge is present. Age 15 and suffering from a Catholic sex education, I didn't know for certain that humans couldn't get dogs pregnant (I did know that any offspring wouldn't be fertile, because that's the definition of "species", but high school biology lessons are seriously limited).

I genuinely have no desire to restrict other people's consensual sex, so by extension I don't empathise with "think of it like not seducing a friend's spouse behind his or her back", but despite that I do recognise that other people do think that way and therefore people shouldn't listen to me. :P